Here we go again. Every season National Hockey League referees start out calling everything in sight, and every season the crackdown peters out as the games gain importance. The 2013-13 season is no different.

This is bad news for clubs like the Edmonton Oilers who seemingly rely on special teams as a difference-maker. The Oilers have outscored their opposition by a 29-20 count on special teams this season (25 powerplay goals to 19, and 4 shorthanded goals to 1), but have been taking a beating at even strength to the tune of 36 for, 56 against in 5-on-5 or 4-on-4 play.

Last year we noted a strong decline in powerplay opportunities for the Oilers as the season progressed. It’s been more of the same in 2013-13. With 28 games on the books now, let’s split Edmonton’s season into quarters and look at their powerplay opportunities per game in each segment. (All data from NHL.com) The trend is pretty stark.

See, Martha, I told ya they wuz out to screw us.

Seriously, it’s little wonder Oilers fans are paranoid about officiating. However, we needn’t be alone. Let’s put the foregoing in a little context by adding opposition powerplay chances to the mix.

A typical Oilers game featured about 10 powerplays for the first part of the season, but has plummeted to under 6 in recent weeks.

Part of this is players learning the ropes each year, getting nailed a few times for the trendy penalty du jour (this year’s have been about gloved pucks and faceoff violations, with my personal favourite being the combination of the two, Two Minutes For Losing Your Balance On A Face-Off And Accidentally Touching The Puck With Your Glove). As always, though, a huge part of it has been the zebras swallowing their whistles.

The trend is league-wide, and it is persistent. Again, this is something we quantified late last season, when we broke out league-wide powerplay data into 100-game blocks. After Sunday’s games, 420 games had been played around the league, an average of exactly 28 per team, same as the Oilers. Let’s split that into quarters as well, blocks of 105 games. Just for fun, we’ll also sort the data by home/road splits:

The decline here has been steady (to put it mildly), although beginning to flatten out as the number approaches zero, rather than accelerating off the cliff as in the peculiar case of the Oilers. Particularly interesting here is the persistent differential between home and away teams, with “home ice advantage” clearly manifest in the form of additional powerplay chances. Even as overall numbers drop across the board, the home teams have held an edge of 7-10% more powerplays in every block of games, resulting in this astonishingly regular graph.

Let’s have a closer look at the actual numbers, showing both home and away teams apparently sliding down the same slope while maintaining a steady-as-she-goes relationship between them.

Just in case you thought the home fans don’t have any influence on the men in stripes, this suggests otherwise.

Finally, just for fun, let’s have a look at all the above trends — Oilers, opponents, and league average together:

Asked about another questionable night of NHL officiating after Monday night’s 2-0 loss to LA Kings, Edmonton Oiler coach Tom Renney couldn’t hold back. His normal deference to the whims of the striped hockey gods dropped its guard for a moment, as Renney snapped “Maybe they need Hollywood in the playoffs!”

Today “they” snapped back, as the NHL lightened the wallet of the Oilers’ bench boss by $10,000. If Renney had expected his comment to fly under the radar, that expectation was dashed when he was quoted verbatim in headline-sized font at the influential Puck Daddy blog, as well as (cough, cough) right here at the Cult of Hockey.

(In fact, I’m feeling guilty enough for propogating Renney’s message in this space that I’m prepared to chip in to foot the bill. I got nineteen pounds of unused, soon-to-be-unusable pennies that I’d be happy to send the league office’s way. They can pay the shipping charges.)

Standard caveat: NHL officiating is a difficult job and has been the subject of controversy for as long as there has been an NHL. My view is that the men in stripes are part of the product, and should be held accountable to a certain standard. When they fall below that standard, as Mike Leggo and Tim Peel did on an especially bad night in Staples Center, there should be consequences beyond getting chewed out by a coach.

Still, Renney’s frustration has surely been building for awhile. A month ago I wrote of how Oilers powerplay opportunities had been drying up at a much faster rate than those of opponents, and since then that situation has gone from bad to worse. As of today the Oilers have had more powerplays than their opponent exactly once in the last 21 games, compared to 14 occasions where they had fewer chances and 6 times the same number. The last eight games in a row have seen the Oilers beat a steadier path to the sinbin than their rivals every single night. It’s a pretty remarkable run:

First things first: the powerplays that were called didn’t make a huge amount of difference in the outcomes. In all but one of the games, each team scored the same number of powerplay goals and the game was decided at even strength. Oilers PKers killed off their penalties (which included a couple of 3-on-5’s) to the tune of 89.2%, whereas the increasingly-rusty powerplay clicked at 17.6%. Those conversion rates combine to a Bowman Index of 106.8%, a very good performance even over a short span. Almost good enough to break even, despite facing more than double the number of powerplays against than for.

More than double! What’s up with that? I get that weaker teams are in “chase” mode more often and might be prone to take the odd additional minor, but rarely do you see a team fall into such an abyss as this over an extended period.

There’s not much point in anecdotes about this call or that non-call, there is always enough stuff near the border that even a team getting the better of the breaks can always find some examples. But this seems more than the luck of the draw, as in recent games refs have seemed outright reluctant to put a team’s playoff chances in jeopardy with a marginal or even not-so-marginal call. The Oilers have no playoff chances in danger of being jeopardized, so the stripes are much less reluctant to pull out their whistles from some deep dark place to call what to my eye has been quite a series of tickytack penalties, including one technical call I had never seen before in 50 years of following the sport.

Some of it is luck of the draw. As mentioned, controversial officiating dates back to the dawn of the game, and any given team is going to come out on the short end of the stick from time to time. It’s like running into a hot goalie occasionally, it’s just a fact of life. But by the time eight goalies in a row have done their best Sawchuk impression against the home side, one starts to wonder if and when that darn worm might ever turn.

Much more troubling is that Oilers have been dropping like flies all the while. This may well be why Renney’s patience has run out, as he has lost four defencemen in the last five games to head and neck injuries. One was purely accidental but the other three were all on questionable hits, only one of which (Rick Nash boarding Theo Peckham) even warranted a minor penalty. Dustin Brown hammered Ladi Smid right in the namebar, and Bobby Ryan came up high, hard and with both arms against a vulnerable Corey Potter. Meanwhile, Taylor Hall goes under the knife today in the aftermath of an unpenalized board check months ago, his season ended in an unpenalized charge weeks ago.

Some old-school fans would say that’s what guys like Darcy Hordichuk and Ben Eager are for, to provide some “police” protection. To its credit, the league has increasingly taken command of that function in recent years, but it needs to be a priority. The onus is on the league office to ensure that workplace safety is at the front of every referee’s mind, every night.

Perhaps Renney has finally reached the point that he feels the need to protect his players by pointing out some of the inequities that have taken place during the stretch drive. Better late than never that somebody speaks up for player safety, because the NHL and its officials have been doing a poor job of it as late.

Offence dips, 3-point games on the rise

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, hockey fans. NHL referees have indeed become more and more reluctant to raise their arms to signal …

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Offence dips, 3-point games on the rise

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Example #4191(K){ii} from the NHL's secret manual "This Is Not A Penalty"

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No, your eyes are not deceiving you, hockey fans. NHL referees have indeed become more and more reluctant to raise their arms to signal penalty infractions as the season has progressed. The trend is both real and very significant.

I had a little rant on this subject last week, while spotlighting the severe drop in powerplay opportunities in Edmonton Oilers games as the 2011-12 season has progressed. That trend was on both sides of the puck, powerplays both for and against, revealing that total PP’s for both teams had plummeted from 8.0 per game in the first 20% of Oilers games to just 4.7 per game in the most recent 20%.

At the time I guessed that the Oil might be on the thin edge of the wedge, but I was certain the trend was league-wide. It’s easy enough to check, all one needs is the patience to copypaste game results in 30-game blocks from NHL.com’s own game-by-game results into Excel, and the data is all there for the mining. All 1038 games, right through last night.

Focussing primarily on the first 1000 games, I followed a similar methodology as my Oilers study but grouped the data into chronological blocks of 100 games, and then again into two blocks of 500. I sorted everything into totals per game; if you want per team, divide by 2.

“Real goals” exclude erstatz shootout markers that are included as part of the official game score but not considered here. “EV” goals are primarily those scored at even strength but will also include relatively small numbers of shorthanded goals, empty netters, and 6-on-5 tallies; in other words, pretty much all non-powerplay goals.

Let’s disentangle and look at some of the columns individually in simple graphic form, starting with what this writer speculates is the root cause of most that follows, namely powerplay opportunities:

The jagged blue line is average number of powerplays per game for each 100 game block; the red is the average of all 1000 games showing the first five blocks were all above that average, the last five all below; and the dotted black line is a linear trend line confirming the obvious: down, down, down.

Teams have actually converted those powerplays at a fairly steady rate, in fact powerplay percentages are trending upwards:

Overall, the league’s powerplays have actually improved slightly at converting opportunities into goals, but their overall production is nonetheless way down because the laissez-faire officating is by far the bigger factor. Check it out:

The low data point in the fourth segment and the relatively high one in the ninth were not a reflection of opportunities so much as they were ebbs and flows in PP conversion rates around the league, but the overall production trendline in terms of actual powerplay goals is heading south more or less in lockstep with the decrease in opportunities.

In non-PP situations, offensive production has remained relatively flat:

Note how the trendline practically dissects the average. Worth remembering that these are raw goals totals which do not account for the fact that there is more even-strength time in recent games than earlier in the season, so production-per-minute is likely trending down slightly. But overall goal production is on a much steeper slope:

Other than the unusual low data point in the first 100-game segment (the “Khabibulin Effect”!) we see the same overall downward trend, the whole league seemingly tightening up its defensive game as the season has gone along. In fact, almost all of that slope can be attributed to NHL referees calling fewer penalties.

Note that all three goal-production graphs have been produced on a similar scale, namely a range of 1.0 goals from top to bottom, so that their trendlines can be directly compared.

A similar trend can be seen in overall shots on goal rates, which have been on the decline since November:

Another perhaps more tenuous link can be made to the growing number of three-point games:

Lower-scoring games in general are statistically more likely to be tied; moreover, my educated speculation is that in a tie game in the third period, a powerplay opportunity is the best opportunity to break the logjam of “hang on to what you’ve got” hockey — or my preferred term, “third point strategies” — that both teams are apt to play at even strength. Another valid argument is that hang-on-to-the-tie philosophies have historically become ever more ingrained later in the season as playoff implications of each game become clearer. It would take a whole ‘nother study to disentangle all these factors, so for now I’ll merely point out that this season’s trend for ever more three-point games is not inconsistent with the league-mandated reduction in penalties and goals.

The comparison from the first 500-game segment to the second is more straightforward, no graphs required. Real goals are down 5.8% from the first such group to the second. The reduction in non-PP goals is relatively small, just 1.6%. Powerplay goals, however, are down a staggering 19.1%, a direct outcome of a reduction in powerplay opportunities of a whopping 20.4%. Shots are down by 2.2%; moreover shooting percentages are also down league-wide, dropping from .091 to .088, surely due to a lower proportion of high-percentage powerplay shots. Translated that’s a reduction in goals-per-shot of about 3.8%.

The absence of powerplays has taken a serious bite out of of offensive hockey almost any way you care to look.

Just in case you think it’s going to turn around soon, think again. The first 38 games of the eleventh segment show ever-deepening trends. There have been just 5.26 powerplay opportunites per game, by far lower than any previous block of games. On average just 0.87 powerplay goals are being scored in those games, 10% lower than the previous low water mark. NHL games are currently featuring less than five real goals per game, this despite the fact that a staggering 32% of recent games have had an overtime period — the highest such rate of any block of games season-to-date.

To their credit, the NHL braintrust is seizing the day. Amid reports that declining penalty statistics were actually brought up at this week’s governors’ meetings, the board took drastic action. Reportedly they have ordered a crackdown on line changes of all things, while it’s “steady as she goes” on obstruction and dangerous fouls. Just when you thought news couldn’t get any gloomier, Oiler fans, they’re gonna crack down on line changes for pete’s sake. Just what we need. It’s open season on Hall, Hemsky, Petry etc., but heaven help you if you make a bad change or shoot the puck over the glass. Now that is a penalty!

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Previous Cult of Hockey posts on officiating, rule enforcement and player safety:

Even infractions which result in supplemental discipline seem to be lightly-enforced on the ice these days. This slewfoot / scissors takedown of Jeff Petry last week was nasty enough to cost Montreal's Erik Cole a $2500 fine, but just two minutes in the sin bin.

Refs have pocketed whistles in 2012 and we got the graphs to prove it

By now everybody has noticed that NHL referees have pocketed their whistles in recent weeks. A while …

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Refs have pocketed whistles in 2012 and we got the graphs to prove it

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Example #3348c from the NHL's secret manual "This Is Not A Penalty"

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By now everybody has noticed that NHL referees have pocketed their whistles in recent weeks. A while back the Edmonton Oilers played their first penalty-free game (both teams) in what seemed like/may actually be forever, for sure an exceedingly rare occurrence. But that game in Toronto a few weeks ago was more a harbinger than a shot in the dark, as powerplays have suddenly become an endangered species.The last five Oiler games have featured just 18 powerplays in total for the two (well, six) teams combined, with the Oilers themselves enjoying the man advantage a ridiculously puny six times in total over those five games. Paranoid Oiler fans — me among them! — have noted with suspicion this development has occurred just as our team has reached the top of the league in powerplay conversion rate. Let’s put that “theory” aside and simply look at the raw numbers.

One simple way is to look at numbers of powerplays on a game to game basis. I could bore you with a hundred details but will stick to one striking contrast. After receiving at least two powerplays in each of their first 47 games, the Oilers have had one or none in a stunning 8 of the last 18, including these last three in a row. The probability of this happening randomly is statistical noise; instead, it appears to be a concerted campaign by the NHL and its striped minions to stick to 5-on-5 play.

It’s easy to see the effect graphically. With the Oilers having played 65 games, I decided to group their games in groups of five, parse their powerplays for and against on a per-game basis, and see how noticeable the decline has been in statistical terms. It is in fact, pretty stark:

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These five-game averages are derived from the useful game-by-game data at NHL.com. The Oilers (blue) had been averaging a fairly steady four powerplays per game through the season’s first half, suddenly those rates fell off a cliff. There was one rebound, followed by an even more precipitous second chasm whose only “good news” comes with the mathematical certainly that soon it CAN’T get any less. At the same time, the Oil have had to kill off fewer penalties as their per game penalty rates have dropped from ~4 to ~3.

On an individual basis, Oilers’ scorers have seen their rates of drawing penalties plummet. Taylor Hall, no stranger to making things happen, drew 2.3 powerplays for every 60 minutes he played last year; this year that number is down signficantly, to 1.8. Jordan Eberle has been shaved from 0.9 to 0.7, Ales Hemsky from 0.9 to 0.6, Sam Gagner from 0.8 to a subterranean 0.2. The newcomer, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, has drawn just 0.4 penalties for every 60 minutes he’s been out there, despite his apparent elusiveness nobody ever fouls the guy. Apparently. Something doesn’t add up, although it certainly does subtract.

Of course, 65 games worth of data splits evenly into 5×13-game groups just as surely as 13×5. So I re-sorted the data into these broader bins with the expectation of smoothing out the jitter a little. Sure enough, the picture is even clearer:

Clearly, the drop in powerplays affects both teams, not just the one, although the Oilers’ decline has been quite a bit steeper than their opposition’s. The Edmonton team that has averaged 3.7 powerplays per game for the previous two seasons were running at about four per game for the first three segments, then three, then just two. In recent games the Oilers routinely have to kill off more powerplays than their opponents: two to one vs. Anaheim last night, two to zero vs. Dallas, four to one vs. St. Louis. In other words all three games in the Oilers’ latest losing streak. It’s a concern.

Even more of a concern is the NHL’s apparent unwillingness to protect its assets, as their officials continue to ignore, misdiagnose, or miss altogether, obvious infractions of the dangerous type. Friday night it was Marc Fistric “lightly” crosschecking Taylor Hall feet-first into the end boards, causing the Oilers star to land awkwardly and wrench his shoulder. Last night Saku Koivu shoved his stick between Ales Hemsky’s legs, put his hand on Hemsky’s shoulder, and shoved him hard to the ice, the Czech’s feet entangled in the carelessly (?) placed stick. Now I respect Koivu and am prepared to give the benefit of some doubt. Was it a dirty play? Not sure. Was it a penalty? Absofreakinlutely.

Instead, Oilers saw their recent $10 MM reinvestment go down hard, stay down, nurse himself back to the bench and make his way gingerly up the tunnel. He did manage to return — this time — but was a much less effective player in the third than he had been earlier in the game to my eye.

Again, these are borderline plays, I’m not calling for suspensions but I think the occasional powerplay is in order. The fact that opponents don’t even pay the minimum price of two minutes for infractions such as these is hardly going to dissuade them from continuing to lay on the lumber (or whatever you call that stuff “composite” is made of).

It is at this point — where failure to enforce the rules compromises workplace safety — that I feel obliged to climb on my tiny soapbox and call out the NHL. It’s not just the Oilers’ stars I’m concerned about, but all players, all around the league. Jordan Eberle’s “accidental” slewfoot on Teemu Selanne should have been called every bit as much as Koivu’s can-opener on Hemsky. Instead, silence.

When did “borderline” suddenly become completely acceptable again? Cuz some of the stuff I’ve been seeing is borderline dangerous.